Review: Beethoven Returns for the Age of Black Lives Matter


Beethoven’s only opera “Fidelio” is not a fixed text. He wrote several possible suggestions for it and over the course of a decade he significantly overhauled the score. But its meaning has never changed: heroism to be found in devotion, love and freedom in the face of injustice.

In 2018, the bold and creative Heartbeat Opera, a small and still young initiative that has contributed more to the vibrancy of opera than most major American companies, took the malleable history of “Fidelio” a step further. adapting the job as a moving indictment collective imprisonment.

This production has been revised for a revival that opened last weekend at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. continues until the end of the month. Already inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this “Fidelio” now permeates it and the adaptation is even more powerful.

In Beethoven’s original song play – a musical theater form in which sung numbers are set with spoken scenes – a woman named Leonore disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, to infiltrate the political prison where her husband Florestan is held for political reasons. He aims to save Pizarro from execution while exposing the crimes of his captor.

Heartbeat founder Ethan Heard adapted “Fidelio” for the company and collaborated with playwright Marcus Scott on the new book. Their revision tells the story of a Black Lives Matter activist named Stan, sung by Curtis Bannister, an impressive endurance tenor who has been imprisoned for nearly a year and whose wife, Leah, is given an impressively agonizing sub-range by soprano Kelly. Griffin is at breaking point as he tries to save her.

He gets a job as a prison guard; The strategy of getting Stan in solitary confinement (just as in Beethoven’s original) is to involve a senior guard (here Roc sung by bass-baritone Derrell Acon with both charm and dramatic complexity) and his daughter (Marcy here, soft-voiced in the portrayal of soprano Victoria Lawal). but strong). There’s no need for disguise in this narrative: Marcy and Leah are both queer. And most importantly, the fact that all these characters are Black is a reality that emerges before Marcy and her father guide their awakening as they confront their accomplices in a racist system, Leah says, “designed to punish people whose only fault is to be poor.” and black.”

The spoken text is entirely in English, the arias remain in their original German – a testament to Beethoven’s timelessness, but the production’s superscripts take some liberties with translation. (As an excuse to briefly bask the inmates in the sun, Roc says it’s the king’s name day, but the headlines say it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day.)

Arranged by Daniel Schlosberg for two pianos, two horns, two cellos and percussion, the composition was radically transformed, with Schlosberg conducting keyboard multitasking (and almost stage playing) on ​​stage. Expressive cellos reveal the thoughts of the characters, and horns add an air of brawn and dignity. The most important interventions are in percussion; drumbeats opening up for dramatic effect and a whiplash-like slap that adds horror to Pizarro’s murder-planner “Ha, welch’ ein Augenblick.”

Not all changes in 2018 were necessary or wise. Beginning with the venue: This production unfolded at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in a black box space that fits the room scale of the music and highlights the cinder-block claustrophobia of Reid Thompson’s set. At the Met, the show floats on a wide stage and struggles with poor acoustics.

And the text lost some of its elegance, with obscene references to January 6, 2021, the uprising and President Donald J. Trump’s infamous appeal to the Proud Boys to “stand back and wait.” One victim of these delays is Pizarro, a caricature of baritone Corey McKern, a sort of Trump surrogate, among the subtle, human characters.

You can almost forgive the fact that “O welche Lust” is the famous convicts choir, still the emotional climax of the production, and now a theater hit. For the thrilling issue, Leah opens a chest—a metaphor for prison doors—to release a white screen on which a video is projected, with 100 incarcerated singers and 70 volunteers from six prison communities. The camera often lingers on individual faces, creating an effect not unlike Barry Jenkins’ filmmaking. her constant close-ups Invite sincerity and, above all, sympathy.

For the curious audience members, Heartbeat shared letters from some participants. Very different from the gratifying – Michael “Black” Powell II’s “German was hard!!” – deeply, for example from Douglass Elliott: “Most of us are victims of circumstances, choosing the wrong direction with our actions when faced with difficulties. This choir gives us that ‘normal’ feeling for a short time every week. We are considered people, not numbers.”

Beethoven’s triumphant finale could have been an affront to the contemporary reality that Heartbeat’s production was intended to create. After Stan is released and Pizarro is defeated, Leah wakes up at the same desk where she had a frustrating phone call with a lawyer at the opening. This twist, which was all a dream, is of course a tired metaphor, but nothing more.

After a moment of despair—her happiness felt so real—she gets up, steps into a spotlight in the center of the stage, and picks up her phone, posing for the activism of her husband where the production began. An unstable closing scene is an honest reflection of our time: the mixed successes of Black Lives Matter, yes, and the only possible way forward.

Fidelio

Performed at the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium in Manhattan and toured through February 27; heartbeatopera.org.



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